Atmospherics when you get to this stage you are one victory away from the super bowl. You know, you are so close, and this is the one game that, to me, you know, i lost many of these games, it hurts, because you are so close, and yet you are just coming off having played, so there is no, not a whole lot of buildup to it but the magnification of the game is you you are one game awa from a championship. Rose we conclude with John Elliott Gardiner talking about js bach. I think he was a man very much like you and me who has the same preoccupations, the same problems, the same stresses in his life, and my goodness, he had plenty of them when you consider he lost both parents when he was nine and a half, and then his first wife and then ten out of his 20 children before the age of 3 died. I mean, even in an age when infant mortality was rife, that was a lot and he somehow managed to condense all of that grieving and all that loss into music and give it an incredibly positive consoling spin. Rose russia, putin, football and bach, when we continue. Funding for charlie rose was provided by the following. Additional funding provided by these funders. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services word wide. From o captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Russia is on high alert as it prepares to host the 2014 Winter Olympics next month, recent terrorist attacks in sochi left at least 34 dead, president Obama Vladimir putin staked a lot of prestige on the success of the games, western observers are concerned about Security Issues and the recent record on human rights. Putin signed a new law banning the spread of homosexual propaganda, yesterday a speech to ambassador the president offered his assurance every athlete will be treated equally, last month he freed members of the punching collective pussy riot along, along with jailed oligarch. Vladimir putin is david herszenhorn, the moscow correspondent for the New York Times. Masha gessen, leza russian american journalist and author of a new book, word will break cement. Julia ioffe, sr. Editor at the new republic and joining us from washington, stephen sestanovich, a senior fellow at the council on foreign relations, his next book is maximal list, from truman to obama. Welcome all. David, tell me where russia is at this moment. Just on the other side of europe. Rose how long has he been there . Quite a long time. Russia is, as always, an interesting place, we have seen president putin in recent months really reasserting russias presence on the world stage. Rose something he always wanted to do. Something he always wanted to do and most clearly obvious when president obama was thinking about a missile strike on syria, obviously. Russia steps in and foils the plans to disarm the chemical weapons there. That was very dramatic but of course we have seen russia outmaneuver the west in ukraine, inserting their influence there and this is a moment when putin has made clear he intend to restore russias greatness, its influence, and the gapes are part of that legacy. Rose it is interesting about hip because i talked to other leaders and all say to me, you know, we have a feeling that russia has a strategy and putin has a strategy, and we dont see the United States with a strategy. Well there are a lot of people that say right now the United States to longer has a russia policy, that, in fact, president obama had held out a last ditch hope of more nuclear cuts as a legacy issue for him, and when that fell apart last spring, followed by Edward Snowden, of course, receiving temporary assignment in russia that really closed the door and syria opened a new door where there was a transactional relation chicago, what can russia and the u. S. Do together on syria, iran, on security about the olympics, but visavis russia itself, there is little in the way of u. S. Policy at the moment. Rose where is russia in your moment masha. In terms of strategy, i dont think putin has a strategy. Rose what does he have . Well, he has an instinct, and now for the first time really in the time he has been in office, putin has a philosophy that is where the antigay laws come in, he suddenly found this issue gets traction internationally and sort of seeing russia becoming the traditional values capital of the world. Rose how do you see it, ruks. I would have to agree with masha, i dont think putin has much of a strategy, he is more of a tactician than strategist, he has an instinct and i think creating this russia as a bastion of christian traditional values is an outgrowth of this kind of pseudoneocold war stance that he is basically everything that the west is not, and it doesnt require i mean, it doesnt require a strategy to be antiwest, so whatever the u. S. Does it is very easy to counter it, to checkmate the u. S. , or to kind of steal its thunder or to derail the western strategy. Rose stephen . You know, i dont know whether putin has a strategy but he has a system, and he is two years into his third term, and it looks like a very different russia to him from the one that he left when he left the presidency at the end of in 2008. At that time, he was politically dominant, he had a growing economy, he had managed to beat back separatism in the north caucuses and has moderately peaceful ethnic relations and now he has an activated political opposition, he has got declining economic growth, he has race riots in moscow. You might argue whether Foreign Policy takes some of the sting off those i also think putin is in his last stage in office, but for a dictator who has chosen the most effective way of fighting down protests he has not engaged the opposition, he has not chosen to institute reforms as many other politicians in his position have done. He has chosen to crack down and a crackdown for a dictator guarantees maximum stability for the maximum amount of time. Eventually it will fail but it may takes year. Rose several specific things now the ukraine, stephen, how he pulled that off . He pulled that off by reaching into his bank account and offering 15 billion to bail out president Obama Yanukovich his former finance minister this we can said, you know, that wasnt such a great deal we did that without conditions and the ukrainians wont be able to pay us back, what is the logic in that . He is ambling that this will pay off for him politically, that it will be a way of asserting russian power, but it is a gamble. Rose and granting asylum to Edward Snowden . I thought that was grossly mishandled. What is the advantage that putin has gotten out of that . I mean talk about, you know, kind of, you know, calling inaudible. He did not calculate, i think, what the longterm consequences were going to be for relations with the United States. I think thats right, but i think th the sun kind of fell on their lap and after they forced the plane carrying i think the venezuelan president to land in europe, i think there was, in terms of optics there was not much putin could do, other than to keep snowden in russia, i think in terms of just prestige and saving face he had to keep them there. Major news on the editorial pages and New York Times lauding snowden as a whistleblower and putin comes across as this defender of a whistleblower. That is exactly what was on the general, and it is not rose the agenda of putin, part of his the repertoire to think about longterm consequences but i think it played out pretty well for him. There was a press conference organized at the moscow airport with a number of socalled human rights organizations that participated. Rose supporting the asylum. Supporting the asylum, snowden himself said at that he found in russia true supporter of free speech, unlike the United States, and, yes, now what, with snowdens reputation sort of getting more and more varnished, it is looking pretty good. There is also another chance to hit a tactical blow against the u. S. , look snowden was potentially facing the Death Penalty in the u. S. And everybody criticizing russia for human rights offenses but they dont have a Death Penalty. You saw putin at his most confident and asked about a conversation, telephone conversation between the president of the ukraine and the president of lithuania and he said i have no idea what the president s talked about, why dont you ask our american friend, maybe they will tell you and you could see just that zinger but keeping on the ukraine there is a lot that is misunderstood there. Putin is also thinking about russias military influence and the black sea fleet is headquartered in the ukraine, this is extremely important and still stuck in his draw the way nato has expanned into estonia and if you go back to when the european began the Eastern Partnership program and in the former soviet space, russia was saying we dont like this idea and europe was so tonedeaf they were running nato exercises in georgia. Putin had an to go help cypress was a bailout and wasnt willing to put the money on the ground, ukraine rose so what about this recent amnesty for pussy riot and the russian billionaire. He didnt want to release this billionaire, he chose to let him go a few months early. Hoping that there would be some pr benefit out of it, but i think it is more than that, a reflection of how much support there is in russia for getting on a different track, putin himself has had to talk a lot about the rule of law, about opposing corruption, rhetorically he is in many ways on the defensive, and he has tried to use the release as well as the amnesty for the other Political Prisoners as wit ass f showing ruks is a somewhat more normal country, it is unclear yet whether that is going to turn out to be a successful gamble, just as i think his other gambles are not yet certain. The first thing i will strongly disagree with, because i dont think there is nothing to do with Public Opinion in russia, i think it is fairly cynical and transparent move to give something to the west to try to save the olympics, it is literally down to who he is going to take pictures with in the vip zone during the opening ceremonies, i think it was a snap decision made after president obama announced the makeup of the delegations to the olympics which has no highly placed government officials. I am going to disagree with that. I dont think it has much to do with obama, i think it is done for internal consumption, i have heard russians describe putins tactics as akido strategy, when people come at him he never wants to go into ahead to head battle, he steps back a little bit and comes at them later, so what he one of the demands of the opposition was a release of Political Prisoners, he ignored the opposition for about a year and a half, two years, and now he releases prisoners on his terms, whenever he feels like it, and deprives the opposition of some of their main symbols and things to rally around. You know, i disagree about his motivation but i free about the consequences, and i think he has done something very important, probably he is unaware of it but he has done something very important by claiming the privilege of changing his mind. Up until releasing the billionaire businessman. He was, now he suddenly realizes he can say, you know, if i want to put him in prison i will put him in prison of i want to release him i will release him and the only one who makes that decision, that is what he demonstrated with the number of amnesties in december. Rose so does he play a role in the future. Shortly in one of the many exclusive interviews he gave to the Russian Press afterwards he kind of he basically said he didnt say he forgave putin but he said he could forgive putin and it was just kind of putting himself on an equal, on an equal plane with putin and he said he could forgive him, so it makes him kind of equal, i they think he is going to bide his time and kind of watch how the foreign trials, his, for his former oil company go, when he says he is not going to play a role politically he is not being totally truthful but i think time will tell. The kremlin has a hostage, his close friend, his Business Partner is still in jail, he is supposed to be released next year or this year, and the billionaire it has been communicated to him that he already said too much because he has clammed up. Rose and stopped talking. He apparently is going to stay silent until after his partner is released. Rose lets go to the syrian talks that open january 22nd, what is the agenda of Vladimir Putin and russia and what do they hope to accomplish and why . Well, the position possess russia is going to be the same one it has been for some time in dealing with syria, and that is show extreme reasonableness while backing president assad, and that has so far been a pretty successful strategy for them, i hate to use that word, because we know he is a great tactician, but he is he is going to this the russians are going to this conference with the idea that it is not a threat to president assad. They are, by the way, today they said that they want the iranians to be present at the talks. Rose yes. Go ahead. I mean they said, and the United States and what did john kerry say in response . I havent seen secretary kerrys response. The american position has been kind of equivocal here but it is po really kind of a distraction from the main issue which is that the american goal was to try to find a formula for talks on syria that would lead to a political transition. Something post assad. That is not really particularly viable bowl at this point, given the way the talks are organized, and so they are really about probably reconsolidating assads position. He looks stronger today than he did a year ago. And you have to acknowledge putins success on that front. For a long time assads was a precondition for these talks instead what we see is assads continued presence is almost a foregone conclusion and instead what you had for quite a long time is russia saying, look, the Assad Government is ready to come to the table, your job in the west, you were supposed to bring the opposition in, you havent been able to get them together and what happens to these talks, sooner from russias perspective they won this before it started. I disagree with that a little bit, though. I think the cost for the russians in their Regional Policy has been real. They have antagonized the most important regional governments with their support of assad, only the syrians find this i mean iranians find this consoling. Most of the other governments certainly the turks, the israelis, the saudis find russian policy deeply objectionable, egyptians are a little equivocal so russia has had a kind of success here but it has isolated itself. But again that is not thinking about the longterm strategy or the longterm consequences, it doesnt matter, and just like i think these talks, it is perfect for russia, it is process without any results, and the talk about how we are going to talk at the talks is also perfectly russian because in the meantime assad consolidates his position militarily on the ground, he keeps al qaeda gains afoot, gains an ever greater foothold, especially in Northern Syria which goes to prove putins point, assad is fighting our common enemy. And even ron crockett the Ambassador Says we need to rethink assad. Now we do, yes. Rose so when we look at russia today and for the moment, what is the biggest threat to hal mird putin and, hal anywhere putin and to his power. Economy stagnation looks likely but not economic shock, if things keep deteriorating slowly as they are now, if the crackdown continues, if more and more people leave the country or feel absolutely hopeless staying in the country, his power, his regime gets stronger and, in its own way and what happens when he finally does get worse. Rose . What we often see is term limbs are good for a politicians legacy, get out while the going is good so he has to calculate he is going to stay so long he will be blamed for something that goes wrong, mainly an economic slowdown but who knows. Rose so what will the olympics and what do they have the possibility of doing for russia . And for putin, therefore . If it is successful and no terrorist acts and no keep in mind the broader, longer history. The last olympics in moscow was in 1980, carter boycott marred that. Here we have now russia returning to the world stage and this is really important for Vladimir Putin but also for russia and for russian whose want to see great games. Russian cull picture will be on display, that is going to be a big part, not just the opening ceremonies but has been in the whole runup to these leaches, there is a bigg matter of National Pride here and a lot of russian whose will say look, our athletes will be competing in all 15 sports, tell us what kind of games has russia really be able to put on good show like london was able to do with the summer games. I think by march we will have forgotten about the impact of the olympics, but i think the and on russias National Pride, et cetera, but in terms of how the athletes are, that is going to be the key indicator, because in vancouver in 2010, russia did not take nearly as many medals as they had done in the past and as they counted on and part was because of massive graft that later investigation unearthed, but that was a huge shock to russian pride, people were talking about it everywhere, cab drivers were groaning about it, they couldnt even win a hockey game, it was a disaster that point. If that happens on russias home turf, it is going to be bad. Rose we do know that there are a couple of places, one syria, one iran, where, and the Nuclear Issue where russia could play a construct if the role, is it likely to do that . David is right in using the word transactional. Rose yes. The reset was largely transactional, it had a kind of atmospheric framework of good feeling, but that has dissipated as a